


The Glamourie

by elwisty



Category: Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Scotland, Weird Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28578282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwisty/pseuds/elwisty
Summary: Imoen's day starts with a traffic jam, and ends in Ragnarok.
Relationships: Boo & Minsc (Baldur's Gate), Jaheira/Khalid (Baldur's Gate), Sarevok Anchev & Imoen
Kudos: 1





	The Glamourie

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally use the author's notes field, but I'm taking advantage of it for this fanfic to state that I have never worked or studied at either the Universities of Glasgow or Edinburgh, and in fact know very little about those fine old institutions, and also to explain that I wrote this to cheer myself up during a December that was very bleak, for family reasons. Of Gods and Scorpion Grass is on a short hiatus, but the next chapter of that story will hopefully be ready before the end of February.
> 
> One moment in this story is based on a wonderful piece of Sand fanart, itself based on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which used to be on DeviantArt. Sadly I haven't been able to locate the artist or work.

**The Glamourie**

Her phone vibrated on the kitchen sideboard, and the eerie notes of the Saent-Saëns _Danse Macabre_ rang out. Imoen didn’t bother answering. That was her ride.

Grabbing her phone and satchel, she headed out into the raw Dalmeny morning. Was living eight miles out of Edinburgh a fair exchange for the low rent on her cottage? Probably, but it sure didn’t feel like it on days like this. And concerning fair exchanges – the royal blue Mercedes was already pulled up on the sidewalk. Pavement. Whatever. Such a shame about the driver, but at least the next twenty minutes were going to be warm, as well as upholstered in suede.

“Heya! Looking forward to the conference?” She pulled the door very gently closed behind her after climbing into the spacious passenger seat. Jonathan’s smooth face rarely betrayed any emotion. If she hurt his car, that might change. It was the one thing he’d kept in the divorce settlement.

“No,” he replied flatly as he hit the accelerator. He was wearing a leather jacket today over a formal suit. Both Dalmeny and her low stone cottage disappeared quickly behind them.

For ten minutes they made good progress, and Imoen got to enjoy the feeling of being driven slightly faster than was strictly necessary in a very expensive car. But at Craigleith, the Queensferry Road turned into a traffic jam. All movement stopped. She repressed the urge to clamber out of the sunroof and vault across the roof of the stationary jeep that was sulking on the road dead ahead of them.

“She’s going to be there,” said Jonathan without affect, not even doing something simple like clutching the wheel.

“She’s gonna be speaking, huh?” said Imoen, trying to sound sympathetic, and wondering if waiting for the bus to arrive late and smelling of old cabbage would really have been that bad. The wind shot a broadside of sleet against the windscreen. Why, yes, it would have been.

“She’s chairing three panels this week, and presenting today.”

“What was her subject again?” Imoen had been told several times before, but it was better than hearing all about who’d said and done what to whom in the divorce.

“Subject!” The sneer was entirely vocal. Still, it was the closest he came to manifesting actual human feelings. “Hardly a subject. _Philosophy of Science_. A ludicrous field for mediocrities who aspire to the status of a scientist, yet lack the intelligence and discipline needed for the work.”

Imoen didn’t know Elissa well. The slight blonde woman was a long way above her in the university hierarchy, and could mostly only be spotted gliding into conferences to make a crisp, cool speech between television engagements. Still, she never seemed stupid, except in her taste in men.

“Yah…” she drawled, hoping to sound supportive and uncommitted at the same time. She decided to change the subject. If she could.

“This traffic! I reckon it’s the work on the new tramline. It’s clogging up the whole city – can’t wait for it to be over.”

“She likes the trams.” Oops. Wrong choice of topic there. Not that there was a right one with Jonathan. “She was talking about them on the radio last night. Apparently they will make Edinburgh into a world-class, competitive metropolis with its eye on the green-powered twenty-second century.”

Imoen really wanted to tell him that it was just sour grapes: his ex was just angry that he’d kept the Merc, and was consoling herself with a string of failed trains. But even more than that, she wanted to keep her chance of future midwinter limo-rides open.

“I thought you didn’t have a radio?” Or a television, or a laptop, or anything remotely fun.

“Yoshino Hiroyuki lent me his.”

“Ah. How is he?” She liked Yoshino. Pity she couldn’t visit him at work without the risk of running into Dr Death, sans lovely motor vehicle.

“Alive.” A thin line appeared on the ivory-smooth forehead. “He seemed odd yesterday.”

“Any idea what was wrong with him?”

Jonathan shrugged.

Mercifully, the traffic began to move, and her chauffeur was forced to direct his attention back to the road. She was sure that he was operating under a serious misapprehension regarding the difference between psychologists and psychotherapists. He didn’t seem to know there was a difference.

“I’ll drop you outside the John MacIntyre, then get a parking space. If the Glaswegians haven’t taken them all.”

He pulled in beside the large modern conference centre, designed with more heed for utility than aesthetics, that had been dumped on the edge of a city of grand Georgian terraces. The most beautiful city in the world, some said. Imoen was grateful for the John MacIntyre. She was just past thirty, and so had reached the age when functioning central heating was preferable to romantic baronial spires and draughts of cold Scottish air.

Before she could climb out, a young man sidled round the edge of the building. He had thickly braided hair, more earrings than should have been possible, and a cigarette hanging from his lips in patented Bob Dylan style. He was loosely holding a placard with an enlarged photo on it, as well as a single word in a plain black typeface: **murderer**.

The girl in the photo was immediately recognisable from the news reports. About twenty years old with radiant blonde locks and huge blue eyes. What had her name been? Oh yes. Eiridh.

The man with the placard came and stood facing them, almost touching the three-pointed star at the end of the hood. He didn’t shout anything or gesticulate. Just waiting, slouching a little, and making steady eye contact with Jonathan, who stayed unmoving in the driver’s seat.

Well, this was awkward.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“Deslys. A French postgraduate. Still harping on the same old tune.”

“He’s done stuff like this before?”

“Yes. But don’t let him disturb you. He doesn’t have the nerve to create real trouble.” He forced a threatening purr from the car’s engine. “I wish he would.”

She wanted to get out and call security. As unpleasant as her colleague was, he didn’t deserve to be treated like this. Probably didn’t. Though now that she thought about it…

“Go,” said Jonathan, seeming to read her mind, “and don’t bother calling Tom Keldorn. He would only waste my time.”

“What will you do?”

“Drive.” He paused, then added as an afterthought, “in reverse. Of course.”

She tugged at the door handle for a few futile seconds until her driver deigned to press the unlock button on his right. “Uh…thanks for the lift. I’ll see you inside soon, I guess?”

He didn’t reply. She jumped out and closed the door behind her as quickly as she could, lest Deslys try to force his way into the Merc. But he didn’t. The student just raised an eyebrow at her, and took a drag on his cigarette.

Once she had passed through the shaded glass panels at the entrance, she paused and turned just in time to see the Merc reverse in a tight circle, then vanish round the corner of a block of student halls. There was no sign of Deslys.

Jack Winthrop was on reception. He had been on the security team, but was shifted into amply filling a complex rota of desk jobs after hurting his leg. So far she’d met him in at least twenty different university buildings.

“You!” she exclaimed. “Again! So the CIA are still on my tail after the ice-cream incident.”

Jack laughed. “Don’t trouble yourself about the men in suits, lass. They’ll have their hands full of the Glasgow mafia today, you mark my words.”

“They’re here already?”

“Almost at the crack of dawn. They all showed up at once at my desk. Making a hullaballoo, as usual. Thought it was the crowd arriving for an Old Firm match.”

“Queer fellows, the Glasgow lot. It must be something they put in the food there. Maybe in the deep fat fryer. You keeping okay?” And she spent the next five minutes listening to Winthrop talk about the state of his leg, his wife’s cooking, and his grandchildren’s numerous demands for Christmas.

She was still leaning against the reception desk nodding along to a complaint about the weather when Professor Janssen walked in. He was a short, bearded man in his mid-sixties with a craggy face and a manner that was by turns sharp and avuncular. As one of the few academics capable of forming an easy rapport with young people of all varieties, but trusted not to try and sleep with them, not even the pretty ones, he was often found shepherding groups of eighteen-year-olds around university-approved events.

Pretty was definitely a word that could be applied to the small gaggle of undergraduates behind him. Three boys and two girls.

“Hey, Jan!”

“Imoen! So nice to see you. Love the pink trenchcoat.”

“Gotta treat yourself sometimes, right? Are you taking them to the conference?” She indicated his retinue.

“Ah, as astute as ever. Indeed, I am taking them to the conference. And collecting them up at the end, those ones that aren’t kidnapped by Glasgow or worse.” He turned to face the students. “People, listen up. This is Dr van Baalen from the Department of Psychology.”

“Call me Imoen.” She grinned at them and waved. A couple of the boys waved back uncertainly, though not, she noted, the one with snow-white curls and a frilly shirt who looked as if he was on his way to the set of _Dracula_.

“If you have any questions during the day, you can ask me, of course, and you can ask Imoen too. She knows everyone – you did your doctorate here, didn’t you? – and she’ll explain things. And I can’t imagine you’ll have any difficulties locating her, however busy it gets!”

“From space, even,” remarked a sour-faced girl _sotto voce_.

“Quite, Lazelle, quite. Will, do you want to ask something?”

“Uh, yes.” Will was a tall black boy who had been lurking at the back of his group of peers. “What’s an academic conference?”

The others rolled their eyes, but none of them hurried to enlighten him, and they paid close attention to Jan’s answer. Not that it helped them much.

“Excellent question, Will. Whenever I think of academic conferences, I remember my great uncle Richard, who worked as a moderately competent bomb diffuser in the Blitz, God rest his soul. ‘Jan’ he’d say to me, or he would have if he hadn’t been blown to bits in forty-two, ‘Jan, watch out for the delayed action bombs. You think you’ve got a dead one on your hands, then all of a sudden you’ve got no hands at all, and some turnip-head is delivering a very long eulogy over a very small casket…where was I?”

“Academic conferences,” Imoen supplied.

“Really? No idea what they have to do with the Blitz.”

“I can think of some points of comparison,” said Imoen. “The food. The fear. The suffering.” They shared a smirk. Idealism didn’t last long in the world of the Research Excellence Framework. “In answer to your question, Will, an academic conference is the term for a large group of people, each with an obsessive interest in a very narrow field of study, pretending to be interested in what their colleagues are obsessed with in order to further their careers. This is an interdisciplinary conference, so it’s gonna be even worse. We all just nod and smile a lot, and someone from the history department will pretend to understand string theory.”

Jan produced a large paisley handkerchief from one of the pockets in his specially tailored dress jacket, and wiped his eyes with it. They sparkled at her above the silken seam.

“At times like this, I can’t not be proud of you, van Baalen. I was worried when we first met that you still had a shred of optimism left, but I can see we soon rose to the challenge and crushed it out of you. _Gaudeamus igitur_!” he proclaimed, waving his handkerchief like a flag.

She was pretty sure it was St Andrews up the coast that went in for Latin in a big way, but didn’t want to spoil the effect by mentioning it. “One hour sitting between Jonathan Rennick and Dr Xan at Christmas dinner would do that to anyone.”

“Isn’t Professor Rennick - ?” Jan eyed the undergraduates, and tailed off. One of them had probably signed up for a biology degree, in which case it was best not to scare them in advance with stories about their department’s most distinguished neuroscientist. 

“Up the stairs and on the right, isn’t it, Winthrop?” she asked, to divert attention from the incomplete question.

“As always. Foot and drink for lunch will be across the landing. Catering have diluted the coffee just for you, so I hear.”

Imoen grinned. “As long as they haven’t stinted on the little packets of brown sugar. I’ve brought my biggest satchel on purpose. I’m still working my way through the boxes of cookies I adopted at the last conference.”

“The glamourous life of a full-time research psychologist…” said Jan, and ushered his collection of undergraduates towards the stairs. “Straight up, then right!” he called to them as a reminder before falling into step with Imoen at the rear of the party.

“I heard Jon Rennick was suspended,” he remarked in a voice meant to carry only as far as her ears.

“He was, but the suspension was lifted a couple of weeks ago. The university found the allegations were unsubstantiated.”

“What were those allegations?”

“You’ve got to know already.”

“Remind me.” Jan ran the journalism module for English. She supposed he wanted to hear her particular patchwork of rumour and gossip. Before launching into the story, she checked to make sure Jonathan wasn’t striding through the atrium.

“There was a final year undergraduate on the biology course. Eiridh. Good scores, hard worker, but with a long history of depression. Overdosed a few days before her last exams. Her friends said he bullied her; he said he’d never bullied anyone in his life. The university decided to believe him.”

“Should it?”

Imoen’s lip twisted. She wasn’t sure of the answer. “Both sides were telling the truth as they saw it. Jonathan’s idea of personal warmth is telling you that he’d like to dissect your brain. For someone like Eiridh to encounter his type if she hadn’t before – well, it woulda been a shock. Really, the university should let him stick to research. He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the undergraduates.”

“Are they going to restrict him?”

“No.”

“Worth too much as a selling point…”

“The chance to be taught by a world-class scientist – a future Nobel prize winner? Yes, that’s my guess.”

They had been obliged to raise the volume of their conversation since the noise spilling out through the open doorway of the main conference room was beyond the level she would have expected of Rose Street on a Friday night. The undergraduates were hovering nervously around its threshold, waiting for their shepherd to give them instructions.

“Onwards!” Jan called. “Your chairs have been reserved. Don’t worry – it’s not anywhere near as exciting as it sounds in there!” He gave her an ironic salute in parting, and followed his charges into the melee.

A rough voice was audible somewhere near where the table of light refreshments was awaiting her. Tea. Coffee. Cookies. Cute little packets of sugar.

“Listen to this one. I found it in a Christmas cracker last year.”

“…what kind of Christmas crackers do you _get_?” demanded a high-pitched female voice, which Imoen recognised.

“Just listen. Here it goes. How many Platonists does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“Oh God! I don’t know. I don’t care. How many Platonists does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“Don’t be daft! They don’t have any lightbulbs in caves.”

A groan. “That was worse than the one about Descartes.”

Imoen stepped into the room, and quickly located the source of the conversation. Dr Karl Garr was a short, stocky man, currently holding a cup of coffee in one thick hand as if it were a tankard. He had a long reddish beard; red hair seemed almost to be a job requirement at the University of Glasgow, though most of its faculty, like Edinburgh’s, seemed to come from the States. Dr Garr included – despite his irregular Scots accent.

“What was the one about Descartes?”

“Don’t encourage him!” said Nieszka, a willowy post-doc with a shock of scarlet hair. They were friends, in the sense that they’d thrown up together over the side of the Broomielaw the night after speaking at a conference on game theory. “He’s got thousands. There’s a folder on his laptop just called ‘Kant walks into a bar’!”

“Ah, those are good ones. So, my lad Immanuel Kant walks into a pub, and he says to the woman at the bar -”

“Enough! Seriously. Save it for later. There’s gonna be a later, isn’t there?” The appeal was addressed to Imoen.

“Sure. If you make it through the day, there’ll be a cheese and wine reception at six with a piano recital to follow.” She laughed at the matching expressions of dismay on the faces of Nieszka and Karl. “There might be a few places I know round here,” she conceded. “We can grab some people and go before the brown-nosing really starts.”

Nieszka cackled, and put on an over-the-top upper-class accent as she forecast the evening’s polite chit-chat. “So, Professor de Tylmarande, apart from your indisputable genius, personal charm, and magnificent pair of research grants, what do you think makes you suited to leading the College of Arts forward to brilliant future?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t count on it,” said Karl. “Aaron says he’d heard that PR and marketing are going to be shovelling a load of shit on her account any day now.”

“Aaron works in HR,” Nieszka explained for Imoen’s benefit. “He knows where the bodies are buried.”

“Aye, and where he needs to dig the next graves.” Karl paused, and looked around at the press of people. The room was already uncomfortably hot. “Good man though,” he added vaguely. “Digs quick and clean.”

“Anyone with you I should know about?” Imoen asked.

“Nah. It’s almost all Philosophy and Theology people. The ones that didn’t hide fast enough when the Head of College showed up to look for ‘volunteers’. Like our Head of School over there, the one with the aspirin, stuck between Professors Jerro and Zhjaeve.”

Imoen’s eyes skidded over the trio, and instead rested on a young man standing alone in the only corner of the room left partially free of the too-bright lighting. He had auburn hair clipped short, broad shoulders, and rather intense good looks. The operative word was ‘smouldering’.

“Who is _that_?”

Nieszka snickered. Karl rolled his eyes. “That’s Bishop,” he said. “Literature PhD candidate. Talked his way onto the mission, and now acts as if he was press-ganged. There’s no helping some people.”

“What’s his focus?” Imoen persisted. Bishop might be buffle-headed, but that didn’t have to be a problem if he was disappearing back to Glasgow, say, tomorrow morning.

Nieszka’s snicker turned into a full-throated, high-pitched cackle. Dr Delryn, Edinburgh’s University Chaplain, almost dropped his tea in shock. The Glasgow Head of School took a large swig of aspirin-tinged water. Dr de Vere paused her campaign to seduce Dr Valen long enough to send a glare in Imoen’s direction. Not fair.

“You should ask him!” trilled Nieszka, when she’d got her laughter back under control. “He’d just _love_ the chance to tell you all about it. He might even give you a demonstration.”

Imoen narrowed her eyes. Well, she had to find out now. She nodded to Karl and Nieszka – the latter’s eyes were wide and glistened with merriment – and elbowed her way across the room.

“Sorry, Nath, gotta get past. Sorry, Professor- emergency networking underway. Are those new glasses? They really suit you!”

When she finally reached Bishop, he was pouring something from a silver hipflask into a cup of coffee on a side-table. He was just as handsome up close as he’d seemed from the other end of the room. This was not the time to go weak at the knees.

“Heya. I’m Imoen.” She stuck her hand out. He watched it uninterestedly, and took a sip of his fortified coffee. She let her hand fall. “And you are…? We’ve not met before, right?”

His eyes swept over her from her feet to her head. He took another sip of coffee before answering. “No, we haven’t met. Call me Bishop.”

“Is that your first-name or surname?”

Bishop shrugged. He replaced his coffee cup on the table, and took a step closer to her. His chin was covered in stubble of the non-designer variety, and he wore the unremarkable uniform of all PhD candidates: jeans, a faded sweater, and sneakers. And despite that, he was very, very –

“Don’t waste your time,” he said. He spoke in a kind of needling drawl that was also – well…

“On what? On you?” She was long past the age when beautiful men could intimidate her. Actually, she couldn’t recall ever having been that young.

“On anything.” He smirked. “But you can try doing it with me. If you want to. Wasting time.”

“Karl said you were doing a PhD in literature?”

“Karl talks too much.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it about?”

“Sex.”

“Ah.”

He stretched, flexing his shoulders in a slow, deliberate sort of way. “Depictions of sex in early twentieth century fiction.”

He sounded bored. She wasn’t sure how someone could get bored of a topic like that. “How did you decide on the subject? It’s an…interesting choice.”

Bishop gave a laugh like a bark. “I -”

“Your seat is reserved over there,” a deep voice cut in. Her half-brother’s voice. “You should take your place. They’re ready to start.”

An expression like a snarl crossed Bishop’s face. There was really something quite animalistic about him. No objections on her part, she thought, as the young man collected his coffee and stalked away.

People tended to do what her brother told them, even awkward ones like Bishop. Sam was six foot six, and had a personal gym in his spare bedroom. His students speculated that he had served in the US Marines. That was incorrect. He had trained the US Marines.

“Aw, Sam – I was getting somewhere there!”

“Keep away from him, little sister. Tomoko has heard…rumours.”

They hadn’t grown up together. Sam’s occasional fits of mostly unwanted protectiveness seemed like the ghostly residue of a shared childhood they’d never had.

She decided to change the subject. There would be opportunities later to investigate Bishop. “A couple of the Glaswegians want to hit the town tonight. You up for it?”

“I have to run ten miles today to keep to my training plan.”

“ – aw, come on! You know you want to join us.”

“I suppose I can run ten miles quickly enough. Text me at eight, and I’ll track you down.”

“And bring Tomoko! She needs to know she had a lucky escape when Glasgow lost her application.” The largely good-natured rivalry with the big university on the Clyde was much more entertaining than the very real tensions within her own ancient institution of learning.

Imoen wiped her forehead. She would have opened a window, but from experience she knew that this would immediately permit gusts of icy wind to sweep down from Arthur’s Seat, turn the sweat on her brow to a clammy sheen, and blow the paper copies of the running order around the room.

“Who’s doing the keynote speech?” she asked.

Sam glanced at the leaflet he’d been carrying half-screwed up in one large hand. “It’s going to be a joint effort – the ubiquitous Professor Minsc, of course, and some kind of techno-wizard from NASA with an unpronounceable name.”

He smoothed out his leaflet and passed it to her, pointing to the names that crowned the schedule.

“Whoah. I know you have to have loads of initials after your name to work for NASA, but it looks as if this guy’s just moved them all one space to the left.”

“I hope his speech isn’t as long as his name,” Sam remarked tersely. He was bound to be wondering why he hadn’t been asked to give the keynote. Even compared to Jonathan, or Edwin in Zoology, her brother’s ego was formidable. A lot of military historians seemed to confuse knowledge of Alexander the Great with being Alexander the Great _. Imagino ergo sum_ , was what no philosopher had said, ever. Unless they had, the rogues. She’d have to check with Karl and Nieszka later.

“I bet most of the letters are silent,” she said, after staring at the name a while longer. “It’s pronounced ‘Boo’. Maybe with the vowel-sound a bit more Frenchy-sounding, ya know?”

“You think the keynote speech is about to be delivered by a Dr Boo? Sister, has Winthrop been supplying you with sugar-lumps again?”

The only mature response to that was to stick her tongue out at him, so she did.

“I’ll tell your Head of Department on you!” he rumbled, looking down at her in amusement.

“Khalid won’t mind. Besides, I brought him a whole aish el-saraya from Stewartfield last week. He owes me.” He didn’t really. Everyone had taken in something for the informal Psychology staff Christmas party.

“I’ll tell his wife on you then.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Watch me.” Sam was clearly about to push his way over to where her boss’s formidable wife was talking with Eleni from the University of Glasgow, and a dull-looking man with collar-length grey hair, whom she had been introduced to on multiple occasions without ever having gone to the trouble of learning his name.

“Too late, Sam – look!”

Sam paused, and followed the direction of her index finger. She didn’t need to point with any great precision. Professor Minsc was not easy to miss. Not only was he huge, and completely bald, but he also moved with a bouncing tread that lifted him still further above the heads of his peers, so that he gave the impression of being permanently delighted with life.

Two microphones had been set up on a small podium. A couple of seats were on it for the comfort of the speakers. Minsc leapt up onto the podium, ignored the chairs, and snatched a microphone from its stand.

Knowing what was coming, Imoen put her hands over her ears. As he always did, Minsc began by tapping the mike, and grinning like a maniac as the electric multi-pitched screech of protesting sound equipment resounded through the room.

“Can you hear me?” Minsc asked. The audience, whether standing or sitting, nodded muzzily. Some of them were massaging their temples. A few of the undergraduates sitting with Jan whooped and cheered. They must have recognised the Professor from his YouTube channel.

“I will make it just a leet-le bit louder. Today is going to be wonderful for everybody – I know you all want to hear every word. Even the words that aren’t to do with astrobiology and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbs – those are some of my favourite words in the universe, you know.” He spread his arms in enthusiasm. “Long words of unbelievably many syllables.” Pausing, he smiled.

Mad as he quite possibly was, and a deadly enemy to microphones and eardrums everywhere, the man nevertheless had a lovely smile. Laughter lines deepened at the corners of his eyes, and his cheeks dimpled. The sight of him reminded her of how it had felt to be eighteen, and arriving for her first semester at university, full of excitement and dreams of a glorious future. She eyed Bishop, the scruffy doctoral student. At least she still had some hopes about tonight. And the early morning of tomorrow.

“Friends, I am very happy to introduce myself, Professor Minsc of the University of Edinburgh. But I think you all know me already.” More cheers and whistles from the undergraduates. Had someone spiked the watery conference coffee already? “I rejoice to be me and to be here today. But I am _even_ – _more_ – _happy_ to be able to introduce our honoured guest, all the way from Hampton, Virginia: NASA’s own Dr Boo!”

More applause. Nieszka was clapping while also trying to stick her sleeve in her mouth, shoulders shaking.

“Told you so,” muttered Imoen.

Sam shook his head in incredulity. “His father must have hated him more than ours did us.”

“Our old man didn’t hate us, Sam; he just didn’t care.” The crowd around the podium was parting to let someone through. A chat about their shared daddy issues would have to wait. “Here he comes.”

Dr Boo was a study in contrast to Professor Minsc. While the latter was hairless and built like a Royal Marine, the guest speaker was short, very round about the belly, and extremely whiskery. After attaining the podium, he sat himself down in one of the seats provided, having to squash himself into place since the arms of the chair provided insufficient space for his generous haunches.

Imoen felt a headache coming on. She wondered if the Glaswegian Head of School could spare her some aspirin. Every time she tried to focus on Dr Boo’s bewhiskered, pouchy face, a stab of pain thrummed through her frontal lobe like a scalpel.

Minsc continued to burble joyfully from the platform about the conference’s purpose and outline. “And after that, it will be lunch. I have asked out chefs to put Dr Boo’s favourite delicacy on the menu, and they have excelled themselves. Thus, today it will be seedcake for everyone!”

As she glanced round the room, noting the responses from horror (Dr Bodhi) to satisfaction (Eleni) to strained amusement (Jan), she observed a stirring around the seated core of the Glaswegians. Professors Zhjaeve and Jerro were leaning around the back of the Head of School to have an intense discussion; on the row behind them Dr Alexander, a slight, black-haired scholar of comparative legal systems, was listening intently. It looked like a conspiracy. It probably was. She nudged Sam, and they both monitored the little group.

Even before Minsc had finished describing Boo’s glittering career in space exploration, the conversation between the Professors ended in a tense handshake. Zhjaeve said something to Dr Alexander, who rose at once to his feet. Apart from herself and Sam, she doubted anyone else noticed; Alexander wasn’t a tall man, and half the people at the conference were still standing anyway.

“Objection, your Honour! I ...object!” But it turned out that he had a carrying nasal voice, capable of making itself heard above the blast of the microphone. “Objection,” repeated Alexander. “That scientist -” he pointed at Dr Boo, his arm quivering with nervous exhilaration “-is a hamster!”

Imoen frowned. The stabbing pain struck once more, and then…was gone. She was left looking at a rather fat hamster of the Syrian type with a sandy face, white belly, and small pink rodentine hands; he was remarkable among hamsters only in that he had to be over five foot tall and had lately been seen walking to the podium on his hind legs. And he was wearing one of the university’s green visitor lanyards. Security had not been sleeping on the job.

“Squeak?” said Dr Boo.

A stillness descended on the assembly. Where before the academics had been shuffling, fidgeting, muttering asides to their neighbours, and, in the case of Dr Claven, live-Tweeting the start of the conference, each person kept quiet, attention entirely absorbed by the enthroned hamster.

“Yes, Dr Alex,” Minsc responded after appearing more lost for words than she’d thought he could be. “That is right. I see you are a very perceptive little man. Dr Boo is indeed a hamster. And not just any hamster. In their email, NASA told me he is one of the few known specimens of the Miniature Giant Space Hamster. So, you see, he is an entirely remarkable rodent.”

“Squeak,” confirmed Dr Boo. He started to groom himself by licking the palms of his delicate hands, and running them back over his round ears.

“And adorable too!” Minsc added fondly.

The conference attendees still looked stupefied. Imoen tried to force her brain into action, but got stuck on one single thought. _Aw. He is really cute. I’d need to live in a watermill to be able to keep him though…that would be the only way to get a wheel big enough…_

“You booked a _hamster_ to deliver the keynote speech?” Sam demanded. His deep voice boomed around the room. That broke the spell of silence. Almost everyone present began talking, gesticulating, or yelling.

“It’s just a fat man in a furry costume. Pull the head off and you’ll see!”

“I assure you it is a living organism of the rodent type. (But pull the head off anyway. Dead animals are easier to classify.)”

“We should vacate the building immediately. I fear the air conditioning here may have been tampered with -”

“Dammit, it’s not a mass hallucination -”

“How would you know? If it’s a mass hallucination, you’re stuck in it too.”

“They get up to all sorts of weird shite at NASA. Of course, they breed giant hamsters. They use them to test rockets like Laika the Spacedog. Poor wee beastie.”

Dr Garrick dropped in a dead faint, and was caught by Dr Coran, who didn’t seem to mind. Imoen considered fainting herself. It might be a bit cooler and quieter lying spread-eagled on the floor. But then Sam would just tell her to stop fooling around and pick her back up. Stupid big dumb brother.

Perhaps she ought to grab a few of the younger set, and sneak away to the pub. They could catch up on what had happened later. She knew she should feel overwhelmingly excited at this deeply strange turn of events, but really she would much rather practise her feelings of awe and bewilderment off-duty in a corner of the Sheep Heid Inn with a G&T to hand.

The exit was blocked by a turbulence of academics. Tom Keldorn was at their back alongside Winthrop, both apparently trying to find out what was going on. One look at the guest speaker should explain that issue for them.

Sighing, Imoen stepped up to the nearest window, and pushed it open as far as it would go. That was another advantage of modern buildings: you could open the windows without fighting against decades of rot, and paint applied thickly in exactly the wrong place.

Arthur’s Seat and the Crags were barely visible in the heavy cloud. Of all the locations she’d heard mooted as the site of the fabled Camelot, the extinct volcano had to be one of the least enticing. Certainly in winter. Gusts of sleet blew against the few flea-sized figures in reflective yellow jackets who were trudging upwards into the massing fog.

“It’s not real, you know.” The little bubble of chill quiet round the window burst. Bishop was leaning against the wall a couple of feet away. She hadn’t noticed his approach. God knows how he’d made it through the throng.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s not real’? It looks real to me.”

Bishop huffed in amusement. “The hamster included?”

“Could be some kind of trip. An entheogen released into the ventilation, or added to the tea and coffee….” She looked deliberately at his flask. “Dr Alexander told us what to see, which explains why we’re all seeing the same thing…”

The scruffy postgraduate tilted his head in sceptical challenge. “Not bad for a theory. But you need to test it! Let’s see…”

The room was still in uproar. Professor Minsc could be heard above the chaos, his hands clutching the hamster’s pink paw as he pleaded with the creature. “Tell us what to do, Dr Boo! Am I a hamster too? Is that why my kitchen cupboards are always full of little plastic boxes?”

Bishop’s eyes finally settled on a group of delegates from the University of the Highlands and Islands. They were holding themselves aloof from the rest, and seemed unperturbed: perhaps because they’d all piled onto a brutally early train to arrive in time for the morning session, and no longer cared about the spreading madness, or perhaps because giant hamsters were nothing unusual in Inverness.

“What do you notice about that guy there?” He meant Dr Mortimer. She was about to shrug, and tell him that she noticed nothing in particular about the archaeology specialist from Barra, except that he should make more time for calories in his life. Then her vision blurred, the stabbing pain in her head returned – and she understood at once what Bishop meant.

“Holy shit, he’s a floating skull.” She didn’t like swearing, but sometimes circumstances demanded it. When the skull grinned at her, and its blue eyes twinkled, she felt that she’d crossed into a realm where even four-letter words couldn’t help.

“Right,” said Bishop, “Now it’s your turn. Test me. I could be tricking you.”

“Do you often trick people?”

His expression darkened. “Only when they’re stupid enough to show me their backs.” Imoen remembered Sam’s warning, and tried not to sidle away. Maybe a night with him wouldn’t have been such a good idea after all. A man could be both completely coherent and completely cuckoo at the same time. “Look at them. You should be able to spot the weirdest ones easily now.”

He was right. A glance at the crowd revealed that Nieszka had a long rat-like tail, Professor Zhjaeve did not merely have an unfortunate skin condition, and was probably not, as she’d always believed, from Kyrgyzstan, and it was to everyone’s advantage that the Highlands and Islands people had isolated themselves, since one of them seemed to be on fire.

She picked on what she had once thought of as one of the friendlier men in the Glasgow mob. “Him.”

“Looks like an undersized Doberman covered in brown scales. Walks on its hind legs. Wings.”

Imoen nodded slowly. “Yep. Always reckoned there was something odd about Dr Deekin. Didn’t realise it was the tiny dragon wings though. More like the fishy breath and the habit of talking in the third person. Uh – is there anything strange about me?” She twisted around to check for wings or a tail.

Bishop’s intense smirk suggested that he wasn’t the best person to ask. “Depends what you mean by strange…the pink trenchcoat makes sense if you’re planning a stroll in the Cairngorms. Mountain rescue might find you before the ravens do. Or they might not. People have been going missing there a lot lately…”

From near the podium Dr Bodhi turned and smiled at them as if she’d overheard Bishop’s comment, despite the intervening ruckus. Imoen noticed for the first time that the woman was extraordinarily pale, and had a pair of long, curving incisors. Fangs, in fact.

A short, brutal crack sounded behind her. Imoen spun around. All the glass in the window had shattered at once. There was nothing now between her and the tendrils of grey fog creeping down from the broken-topped hill that crowned the city. Freezing rain spattered against her cheeks.

“Well, would you look at that,” drawled Bishop. His composure was so perfect that she didn’t think it could be a cover for panic.

Without considering what she was doing, or what she would do when she got there, she pushed her way through the crowd to the podium. Minsc was still trying to converse with Dr Boo. Could a hamster hold a doctorate? How had he managed the viva? Had the examiners also been hamsters? Never mind that now. She gently captured Minsc’s microphone.

“Hey, folks. I’m Dr Imoen van Baalen from Edinburgh’s Department of Psychology.” She didn’t have to fight for the room’s attention. The bewildered academics seemed happy that someone was taking a lead. “Exciting start to the conference, right? First things first – can we all please agree that Dr Boo is a hamster? That’s what we all see, isn’t it?”

She saw a lot of nods; everyone appeared to be on the same page, even if the page smelled of sawdust and rodent droppings.

“He looks like a hamster,” shouted Karl from the back, “but it’s _petitio principii_ to say that he is one. He doesn’t bloody act like a hamster. I won’t believe he is until I see him burying sunflower seeds in the carpet.”

“Okaaaay. Thanks, Karl. Maybe go find some sunflower seeds so we can put your idea to the test? The rest of us seem to have accepted the premise. Anyway…Dr Deekin, would you walk – or flutter – up here for a moment?”

“Deekin not ready give paper. Still needs more rhymes, and just five hundred verses so far. Ask tomorrow, maybe?”

She watched the friendly, scaly – thing. She’d been planning on including him in the booze-up after office hours. That was one pub crawl that wouldn’t be happening now. Not unless she explained to the guys behind the bar that they were having a Halloween party two months late. Had the bar tenders ever been real? Was the beer real?

“It’s okay, Dr Deekin. I just need you to help me with something. No recital necessary.” She felt kind of bad about that. Deekin was needed insofar as he could serve as Exhibit B. The lecturers from the Highlands and Islands all looked too terrifying to call on, and she didn’t know where to find the nearest defibrillator.

“Is good,” said Deekin, and hopped to the podium. At a word of encouragement from her, he climbed into the spare chair and stood, facing the audience. A moment passed. And the remaining windows shattered. A crack, crack, crack, and big pieces of glass were dropping from the frames within and without the building. “Oops,” said the scale-monster in a small voice. “Can get dustpan and brush.”

“No worries,” she replied off-mike. “It wasn’t you.”

Safana, one of her more irritating colleagues who had a knack for nabbing the bright undergraduates and funding awards before Imoen could, tried to lean against Dr Casavir for support. He took a firm stride to the right, leaving her staggering. Professor de Tylmarande stared at her palms, as if trying to recall something that was just beyond the horizons of her consciousness. Khalid, untroubled, was passing a plastic wrapper full of complimentary conference digestive biscuits.

“In c-c-case Dr Boo needs refreshment,” he explained. “This situation must be very stressful for a hamster.”

Imoen closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them, nothing had changed. The room was still insane. Squaring her shoulders, she returned to the mike. “Bishop has a hypothesis, which I think I kinda support. He says that none of this is real. We aren’t all on magic mushrooms. We are -” but what were they? She looked at Dr Mortimer, at Dr Deekin, at Professor Zhjaeve’s attenuated form and greenish skin, and then out through the broken windows at the wall of fog advancing towards them like a grey armada “- we are trapped in some kind of dreamworld. A glamour. We’re in Plato’s cave. But the dream is starting to break down.”

Even as she spoke, a lump of ceiling material dislodged itself, to land on Dr Odesseiron. At least the collapse of reality wasn’t without its funny side. Or sense of timing.

“It does make sense,” said Dr Xan, sounding more cheerful than usual. “Remember the when the TEF arrived on top of the REF? First thing I said was ‘this can’t be happening’.” He paused in thought. “Turns out it wasn’t.”

“And what about 2020?” put in Dr Alexander. “We did all think it was a nightmare alternative reality.”

“Deekin wants to stay. He likes here. Lots of warm places to sleep, heavy metal music, deep fried food.”

“The little guy’s got a point,” said Nieszka. “What if this is better than whatever’s left afterwards?”

Thin cracks were appearing in the dull cream paintwork, and spreading out across the walls in neuronal patterns. From her vantage point, she was able to meet Sam’s eyes. They glittered with a strange golden light. They had been dark brown, she was sure. The term ‘found family’ wasn’t new to her; it could be applied to many people in her life, but literally to him. She was about to put the mike down so that she could go and stand by her brother and wait for whatever was going to be, to become, when the last of the conference delegates arrived.

“So. You’ve understood, at last.” Jonathan was standing in the door. His greyish hair was mussed by the wind; his face looked as immaculately sculpted as ever.

“Did you do this?” She spoke the question into the microphone. It boomed out in an accusing wave. Embarrassed, she turned the mike off. She didn’t know exactly why she had felt so powerfully sure that he must be responsible; the conviction had simply surfaced at the top of her mind, a whale from the depths, then sunk again.

Jonathan didn’t appear to be offended. “No. I observed. I did not intervene. I am a scientist.”

Imoen noticed the look on Tom Keldorn’s face. The security chief was well-positioned to kick Jonathan’s ankles. She hoped he would, to see if it fractured the man’s habitual air of superiority.

“So how did you find out? How long have you known?”

“Months. There have been multiple signs of the thin nature of this existence. Repeat weather patterns, conversations, directives from the Vice-Chancellor’s office. But it was Eiridh my student who first drew my attention to the principal indicator.”

She wasn’t sure if he was enjoying being the focus of all eyes, and was drawing the moment out to savour it, or if he merely couldn’t summon enough emotional engagement to complete his train of thought.

“Deekin knows! Is dragon of Ballachulish. Big and scary. Had to sing him to sleep. Needed six packs of throat sweets after. Dentist very cross with Deekin.”

“It would definitely be really weird to run into a dragon anywhere in 21st century Scotland,” Imoen told the small bescaled humanoid, repressing the urge to pat him on the head. “Or anywhere, at anytime,” she said, correcting herself. Modern woman with a doctorate, she reminded herself. Not a village soothsayer from the ages before the printing press. Dragons do not exist. Unless they do, darn it.

Deekin’s story seemed to have opened the floodgates. Annoying, since for once she did actually want to hear what Jonathan had to say.

“It hailed every day for two weeks straight in Paisley. Then it snowed. Now it’s back to hail again.”

“I ran an essay competition for my undergraduates, and every single one picked the same topic: ‘ _What can change the nature of a man_?’ And they were supposed to be writing about sheep-farming in upland areas!”

“We met up last night to practise for the staff football team. Anyway, one guy turns into a gigantic wolf, and makes us play fetch for the rest of the evening. He burst eight footballs by accident with his teeth…”

“That was me.”

“I know, Cernd. I was just trying not to name names.”

“Ah, understood.”

“I think one of this year’s freshers is a vampire.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. So’s one of the sports science lecturers. And I have my suspicions about the V.C.”

“Squeak!”

Things seemed to be hurtling out of control again. The volume was rising, while the cracks in the walls were getting deeper. She brushed white dust off the shoulders of her trenchcoat in dismay. The reality implosion was all very well, but this coat was expensive. It would be years before she could afford another one like it.

“Hey, guys!” she yelled, waving her arms for quiet. “I love ya all – not literally – but we’ve got to keep it together. One person at a time.” To her surprise, they mostly stopped talking. She jumped into the sound gap, determined to be that one person. “Jonathan, what were you saying? About Eiridh?”

He had been following the melee of voices indifferently, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. Now he looked up, raising his chin.

“My student told me that land – and space – and time – appear to end at the border. England doesn’t exist.” Several people cheered. They seemed to think that this had settled the utopia question firmly in the affirmative. “Neither does Scandinavia. Or Ireland. Or the United States of America. We are in a small island of reality, which is rapidly becoming frayed. Untenable.”

“Does this have something to do with what happened to Eiridh?” Dr Delryn asked. He wasn’t as stupid as his goatee made him look.

“Of course,” Jonathan replied. “She did not want to stay living what she viewed as a counterfeit life. She suggested an experiment, and I provided her with the means to carry it out.”

The chaplain’s eyes widened in horror. “I’m sorry – are you confessing openly to assisting a suicide? And worse, encouraging it?”

Jonathan barely twitched a muscle. God, the man was cold. “Look around you, Dr Delryn,” he said, hands still in his pockets. “Everything is falling apart. According to her hypothesis, the girl will be alive and well in the reality that gave rise to this one. Or, if she erred, she may be dead. Or she may have wiped herself out from time altogether. I was gratified that one of my students showed such interest in the principles of empirical investigation.”

Apart from the noises of the building’s steady disintegration, and the blasts of freezing wind that howled unobstructed through the broken windows, there was silence. Jonathan had managed what nothing else could, and driven the congregation of gossipy, argumentative, obstreperous academics into a state of mute horror.

“Is Elissa here?” he asked. His pale blue eyes ran across the press of faces.

“She’s not due to speak till after lunch. I haven’t spotted her yet. She may be in her office in St Leonards,” Imoen told him. Apparently she was one of the few people in the room who knew him well enough not to be stunned by his confession-boast.

“Ah. Pity. She should -” He paused, then, turning on his heel, he abruptly walked away. She heard his footsteps descending the stairs at an unhurried pace.

“Should I go after him?” Keldorn asked in a sort of general appeal to the crowd, as if waiting for a thumbs up or thumbs down. Roof tiles clattered down onto the tarmac lane outside, as well as the first few pieces of exterior cladding.

“Squeak,” said Boo.

“I agree, Dr Boo!” said Professor Minsc. “To run after the bad man now is not necessary. Fun and good for the heart, yes, but without purpose. He cannot run for more than three minutes and twelve seconds.”

Imoen knew she was going to regret asking the question. She went ahead anyway. “Why three minutes and twelve seconds? That’s a very precise number!”

Minsc beamed underneath his facial tattoos. Or was it warpaint? And how had she not seen the marks before? “Three minutes now. You see, Dr Boo says that this is how long we have until everything ends. And everything begins again.”

A blonde young woman put up her hand, then stood and coughed. She had been sitting on Professor Jerro’s left – and he was another one with tattoos, _glowing_ tattoos all over his face - so she had to be one of the Glasgow contingent.

She shot an uneasy glance at the people watching her. “Um, hi. I’m writing my doctorate on international law and human rights. Was writing. Whatever.”

“We’ve got less than three minutes, child,” snapped Jaheira, the partner of the much more easy-going Khalid. “Would you skip the CV and get to the point?”

The glare from Professor Jerro bounced harmlessly off Jaheira’s inherent cast-iron sense of confidence. Shandra drew herself up, clenching her fists in a manner that spoke more of nervous tension than displeasure.

“Yes. I’m very conscious of that. The thing is – I know that this world is strange. I mean, I’m not a hundred percent sure if the Professor here is my grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, or uncle.”

“If you’re from Dundee, the right answer is ‘all of them’,” Nieszka called. She and Karl chortled, while the glare of both Jerros attempted to fry them to ashes.

“But – despite all that – despite all the hamsters and floating skulls and haunted suits of armour and – whatever Dr Deekin is – I’d quite like to stay here. Because – well, I’m pretty sure I’m dead in the other place. I just have this really bad feeling about it, you know?”

She stopped. The relative who might or might not be her grandfather stared at her, stricken. More pieces of cladding fell heavily past the empty windows, crunching heavily onto the tarmac. Estates are not going to be happy bunnies about this, Imoen thought, and suddenly wished she’d learned to laugh maniacally like a Walt Disney villain; at this particular moment, it would have provided much more mental support than a detailed knowledge of Harvard Referencing.

Khalid spoke next. “I thin-k I am too. Dead, than is.”

“You are not,” his wife hissed. “I forbid you to be dead!” He could only raise his hands in helpless apology.

“I’m dead,” said Professor de Tylmarande. “Mostly.”

“I’m sure I’m more dead than anyone else here,” said Dr Bodhi, letting her corpse-white fingers glide in a lingering caress through her own black hair, as if saying goodbye to it. “Including you, darling boy,” she purred, and blew a kiss at one of Jan’s undergraduates. Dr Delryn boggled.

“And I’m Spartacus!” said Bishop, then grinned his animal grin. He seemed much happier now the world was collapsing around him. “Nah, I’m dead too.”

An entire section of the outer wall shook, and collapsed. Fog began to spill in. Above the dark silhouette of the old volcano, sunlight was splitting the greyness into a spectrum of colours, fuzzier than a rainbow, and unshaped, yet somehow brighter too. Like light through coloured glass.

Minsc was holding Boo’s paw. That reminded her – there was someone else’s paw she had to reach. She jumped down from the podium, and made for Sam. He met her half-way.

“You’re not dead, are you?” she asked.

“No,” he said, taking her hand. “I think not. But Tomoko -” His jaw clenched.

“I’m sorry, brother.” Her stomach lurched, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She liked Tomoko. “Can we stop it?” She knew the answer, and asked anyway. The tendrils of fog were twining part-way up Sam’s thighs. They had already reached her waist.

“No. It’s too late, and – this was never real in the first place. If we’d had longer, we would just have been playing with invisible armies on an imaginary map.”

The blaze of gold in his eyes was so powerful that she could no longer distinguish his pupils. She pressed his palm.

“Having a brother – it’s been good.”

“Of course it has, little sister. Who wouldn’t want a brother such as I?” The corner of his mouth turned up. She choked on a laugh.

“Buffle-head! But try and find me, won’t you? And I’ll try and find you. If there’s an existence beyond this one.”

“I will try,” he said. “And there is more, I am certain. Other names, other struggles…” His eyes flashed. “Other siblings too, perhaps.”

“And the chance to track down whoever made this reality and turn them into hamster food!”

The fog was above her chest. She looked around. Near them, Khalid was holding his wife in his arms. Professor Jerro, half-leading half-dragging Shandra behind him, had almost made it to the door. That might buy the woman a little more time.

Bishop had taken her place on the podium. He appeared to have collected a fresh cup of coffee on the way, and raised it to her in a mocking toast. If he’d owned a fiddle, he would surely have been playing it. Of Jan and Karl and Deekin, she could see nothing at all. The tips of Dr Boo’s ears were still visible, though rising out of a grey dome like the points of Sydney Opera House seen through a sea mist. The mammatus of fog dampened all sound.

“I’m not sure…” said Sam. _Sarevok_ , her brain supplied. “I liked the cross-fit machines. You didn’t?”

“Blech! No. Torture devices. But I’ll miss the Christmas markets. Remember when they let me feed the donkey?”

“Yes. You were twenty-eight. You took about fifty selfies with it.”

They shared a grin. She could see tears at the corners of her brother’s eyes. “Shall we go?” she said. “I hate waiting. I can’t even stand waiting for the bus.”

“Yes. Come. We’ll advance in low-visibility conditions, and gain the advantage of surprise. A classic manoeuvre.”

They turned to face the incoming flood, and walked forward. As it closed over her head, and she felt something break somewhere, like a thread cut with a blunt pair of scissors, she was still smiling.


End file.
